In integrated circuit applications, more and more functions are integrated into products. Accordingly, different functional elements such as audio/video elements, 3G video elements, WiFi elements, and blue tooth elements that are integrated in the same product may need to communicate with each other. Messages thus need to be sent between different function elements.
Conventional methods of sending messages include using a shared bus to interconnect all functional elements, and the messages are transmitted through the shared bus. This method, however, suffers from limited bandwidth of the shared bus since at one time, the shared bus cannot transmit two messages simultaneously. Furthermore, the shared bus can only be used to transmit messages encoded for a same protocol.
Network-on-Chip (NOC) scheme was recently used to replace the old shared bus technology. The NOC scheme may be used for messages adopting different bus protocols, and may perform simultaneous data transmission via non-overlapping signal links. The NOC, however, suffers from scalability issues.